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This incredible selection of photographs, on which Ripley partly based his Believe It or Not cartoons, were sent by people as proof of their apparently amazing feats. "The book begins with a brief biography of Robert Ripley, the quintessential American adventurer/artist, then enters a gallery of oddities from the Ripley's archives. Chapters such as "Nature's Whims" and "Tattoo Talent" offer sights that defy explanation--a man with three legs and a woman blowtorching her tongue, for example."--the publisher. Anyone fascinated with the unusual will enjoy "these often startling, always bizarre testimonies to the truly unbelievable."

Featuring more than 150 black-and-white photographs, 'Hoaxes, Humbugs, and Spectacles' is a vintage collection of bizarre, unusual, and humorous pictures that explore the universal human interest in spectacle. For four years Mark Sloan traveled across America-on a proverbial shoestring-unearthing everything from tiny tin-types sold in the nineteenth century as souvenirs to previously unprinted promotional pictures of circus performers (found hidden in a box beneath somebody's bed) to a bundle of news photos rescued from the Denver Post's dumpster. These pictures, which date from the 1840s to the 1950s are like the treasures in a time capsule-years later they have the same power to amuse, amaze, and entertain. [editor summary]